The Che Café lives on

Last week, UC San Diego, as part of an agreement with student-run on-campus cooperatives, renewed the lease for long-running music venue and food co-op The Che Cafe, ending two years of negotiations over the space. As of fall 2014, the future of the Che looked bleak, with the university serving the space an eviction notice, which a judge upheld that October.

Funny how much can change in a couple years. A press release states that the lease has been renewed for one dollar per year, with free utilities, and with UCSD providing investment in repairs and safety for the venue, which opened back in 1980. The lease has been continued for 40 months, with an option to renew for four more years at the end of the current lease.

After years of conflict, debate, eviction notices, occupation of the space and countless appeals to keep this historic, all-ages venue open, it’s a relief to finally see a happy ending in the saga. It’s always good news when a long-running venue that’s hosted many iconic artists can continue to operate. It’s even better news for the community when one of a small number of all-ages venues in town gets a chance to exist at least another eight years.

Earlier this year, I wrote a feature for CityBeat’s Local Music Issue on the challenges facing all-ages venues, and one of the takeaways was that all-ages venues are essential to the health of a music scene. I can attest to that; I go to many more shows than the average San Diegan, most of them are in bars, and many of the faces I see are older than mine, and I’m no spring chicken.

“Kids don’t go to shows because there aren’t many for them to go to, and then they move away without ever discovering the cool musical groups that San Diego has to offer,” Big Bad Buffalo’s Jordan Krimston told me back in March, noting that a lack of options for kids to discover early on adds to a stigma about a music scene in trouble.

For now, one all-ages venue has been saved, and because of that a younger generation can get in on the ground floor. It’s not a cure-all for San Diego’s scarcity of all-ages venues, but if there’s still a place that an under-21 crowd can go to discover new music, then that’s something to celebrate.